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Pain au bacon

Ingredient Leaven Dough Final Final (%)
White Wheat Flour 40 g 440 g 480 g 96 %
Whole Wheat Flour 10 g 10 g 20 g 4 %
Wheat Starter 10 g 1 %
Water 40 g 350 g 390 g 78 %
Salt 9 g 9 g 1.8 %
Bacon (raw weight) 250 g 150 g 50 %
  1. Leaven. Mix starter, flours, and water until just incorporated. Seal, and rest 8-10 hours.
  2. Fry bacon until crisp. Reserve bacon fat, and remove bacon from heat. Cool to room temperature and crumble.
  3. Autolyse. Blend the flours until homogenous. Add water, and mix until just incorporated. Cover and rest 20-30 minutes.
  4. Mix. Add salt and leaven to the autolysed dough, and mix by hand using the pincer method. The temperature after mixing should be 25ºC-26ºC (77ºF-78ºF). Rest 10 minutes Mix in bacon and rendered fat, again with pincer method, until the bacon and fat are evenly distributed.
  5. Bulk fermentation. Rest 2 hours. Fold three or four times. Rest an additional 10 hours until the dough is 2.5x its original volume.
  6. Shape into a medium-tight ball. Arrange seam side down for proofing.
  7. Proof 4 hours in the refrigerator in a non-perforated plastic bag.
  8. Preheat oven to 250ºC (482ºF).
  9. Preheat dutch oven with its lid at least 45 minutes.
  10. Bake 30 minutes covered. Remove lid, and continue baking 20 minutes until dark brown all around the loaf.
  11. Cool loaf at room temperature at least 20 minutes.

  1. Forkish, Ken. Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza. New York, NY: Ten Speed Press, 2012. 177-9. ↩